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Written by: Chris Appleby

Beyond Belief
How we find meaning, with or without religion
Hugh Mackay, Pan Macmillan, 2016

According to the 2012 census 61 percent of Australians identified themselves as ‘Christian’. However, in practice only 15 percent attend church once a month or more (p. 7). Hugh Mackay’s book Beyond Belief is written for that missing 46 percent.  That is, almost half the Australian population who relate to the Christian faith in some way, yet are “doubters, sceptics, heretics, agnostics and religious fringe dwellers.” (p. 2) The goal of Beyond Belief is to provide spiritual encouragement and direction for those who no longer wish to receive such instruction from the church.

This conflicted and rapidly changing attitude to spirituality is a fascinating aspect of Australia society that deserves greater attention and research.

Unfortunately, Mackay’s book is undermined by a lack of detail, pop-culture theology and a fundamentally flawed process.
I consistently found myself frustrated at the lack of data on display throughout Beyond Belief. What proportion of these ‘Christian agnostics’ come from Protestant backgrounds? What proportion from Catholic families? How does commitment to the tenets of faith vary between country towns and the inner-city; the old and the young? And what of those who remain committed to exclusive truth claims if, as claimed, they stretch credulity to breaking point.

For instance, Mackay acknowledges the growth in Pentecostal churches but writes it off as being as much about the ‘bandwagon’ effect of their communities as specific beliefs (p. 7). Really? Could it not be that explicit Pentecostal doctrine is driving their growth and thereby creating vibrant communities?

Mackay frequently quotes from respondents to his research, which helps make a human connection to those who identify as SBNR (Spiritual But Not Religious). However, he does not give any space to laying out his research methods or extent, so the end result is the book feels anecdotal and partial.
Mackay admits upfront that his book is unlikely to appeal to either committed Christians or atheists and he certainly makes good on that promise. His analysis of Jesus’ teaching manages to present him as a secular humanist whose goal was to dismantle the stuffy institutional religion of his day. His reading of the Sermon on the Mount is particularly galling. I don’t mind him creating a secular spirituality based on pop-psychology but would he mind not using Jesus to endorse it?

He clearly esteems Christian ethics, especially Jesus’ ‘Golden Rule’ but wants to provide a spiritual option for those who find the Christian worldview unreasonable when it accommodates miracles a resurrection and a virgin birth. He therefore discards the Bible’s truth claims in favour of myth as a means for reinterpreting the Christian faith in a way that is acceptable to modern sensibilities.
However, even though Mackay acknowledges it, he ignores the fact that abandoning the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection for a mythical interpretation undercuts the ethical framework of Christianity entirely. (p. 216) After chopping down the apple tree Mackay’s conclusion is to tell us to go on making cider, because it’s delicious and refreshing and he likes it a lot and other people like it too.
Beyond Belief is also undone by its fundamentally flawed process. Mackay surveys the opinions of the non-churchgoing ‘believers’ and attempts to combine them with teachings of spiritual gurus (such as Jesus) into a quasi religion-for-all based on faith in something (anything) and communal compassion.

But how will people have faith in something greater than themselves if the basis of this movement is their own experiences and preferences. And how will anyone adopt a genuinely selfless attitude if it is driven by the recognition that my welfare is bound up in yours and we are all one?
I fear that the conclusion that love is enough will prove to be empty or unattainable for those who adopt Mackay’s way forward.
Nevertheless, Mackay’s research is important. He gives a voice to people who have abandoned organized religion but still experience deep yearning for spiritual fulfilment.

The chapter ‘Anyone for church?’ cuts close to the bone as Mackay articulates the reasons for Australians lack of church-going. Institutional abuses, the treatment of women and a judgmental and exclusionary church culture are all highlighted as prima-facie reasons why we must explore a new spiritual path. Churches must come to grips with this new cultural landscape and Mackay’s book presents these attitudes in a clear and compelling way.
In a roundabout way, Beyond Belief reminded me again of the brilliance of God’s grace. For the Christian, genuine humility and the freedom to love others are built upon the free forgiveness offered in the historical death and resurrection of Jesus. Without such foundations they necessarily fall. Mackay offers nothing as powerful or transformative as the doctrines he discards.
Jeff Hunt

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Written by: Bp Anthony Nichols

INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION by JOHN CALVIN
Translated from the first French edition of 1541 by Robert White, The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 2014.

“A prophet is without honour in his own country”. Jesus’ words have proved true of Jean Calvin, the greatest Frenchman. They also resonate with regard to his brilliant Australian translator, Robert White, former Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Sydney. Robert who came to Christ in a John Stott mission in 1958, gained Honours in Latin and French at SU before proceeding to post graduate studies in Paris in the 1960s. His doctorate from the Sorbonne was for his work on an obscure, bohemian French playwright. But it was in those years that he began a lifelong study of the  Reformation in French speaking areas of Europe. An extraordinarily modest scholar, we can be grateful that his specialist articles in overseas journals attracted the attention of publishers in the USA and UK. Robert White has now produced at least four books on Calvin’s sermons, the latest being his Sermons on Titus, also published by The Banner of Truth Trust (2015).

Why another translation of The Institutes, you may ask? Most of us encountered Calvin through Henry Beveridge’s version of 1845 or the two volumes by Ford Lewis Battles published in 1960.  Both of these were based on the last Latin edition of 1559. All told, The Institutes passed through six Latin editions and three French before receiving their final form. The massive treatise of 1559 is five times the length of the concise primer of 1536. Qualitatively however, there is no fundamental change. Scripture still determines both the content and scope of Calvin’s enterprise. The grace and glory of God remain his theme. The growth from edition to edition reflects Calvin’s pastoral experience, his exegetical reflection, and the unceasing pressure of theological debate both within and outside the churches of the Reformation.

The French version (1541) of The Institutes which Robert White translates, is significant in that its target audience is no longer limited to educated Latin readers, but reaches out in a more familiar style to a broader constituency. Although it recasts the original “catechism” of 1536 into a more ambitious, thorough and methodical exposition of Christian Theology, it is less daunting for modern readers, White suggests, than the final edition of 1559 has proved to be (Karl Barth called it, somewhat harshly, a “primeval forest”!). The last chapter on the believer’s walk with Christ is a model of pastoral insight and was destined to enter the last edition of The Institutes virtually unchanged.

Robert Whites fresh translation of Calvin’s French Institutes makes the Reformer live again. The reader will be impressed by the power and relevance of his Biblical teaching for modern Christians. For the doubtful, I suggest the reading of Calvin’s Preface – his appeal to the King of France. It is surely one of the most moving letters ever penned.
Anthony H Nichols.
  

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Written by: Rory Shiner, WA

From Strength to Strength
A Life of Marcus Loane
Allan M. Blanch
Australian Scholarly, 2015

This Review first appeared on the Gospel Coalition Australia website

Having recently attended WA Baptist leader Noel Vose’s funeral, it’s easy to come away with the impression that, compared to the War Generation, we are spiritually stunted. There was something about that generation’s combination of scholarly earnestness and personal piety I fear we (or at least I) am in danger of losing. And, if I may begin a positive review of an excellent book rather negatively, the question of what happened to our piety is one that has haunted me since reading Canon Allan M. Blanch’s account of the life and work of Sir Marcus Loane in his new book, From Strength to Strength: A Life of Marcus Loane (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2015).

Sir Marcus Loane (1911-2009)

For those who do not know his name, Sir Marcus Loane (1911-2009) was an Australian pastor, author and leading Anglican churchman who served the Christian community with distinction from the 1940s to the 1980s and into his retirement (or “retirement”).

Born a third generation Tasmanian, the family moved to the Australian mainland in 1912, where they would eventually settle in Sydney and where Loane attended The King’s School in Parramatta. A graduate of Sydney University and Moore College, he was ordained in 1935 and married Patricia Knox in 1937. After active service in World War II, including in Papua New Guinea, he lectured at Moore College, where he would eventually served as principal from 1954-1958. He was succeeded in that role by his brother-in-law D. B. Knox.

He was made an assistant bishop by the then Archbishop of Sydney Howard Mowll in 1958, and served both Mowll and Archbishop Hugh Gough until, in 1966, he would follow Gough as Sydney’s Anglican Archbishop from 1966-1981—the first Archbishop of Sydney to have been born in Australia.    
Telling Loane’s Story

In 2004 John Reid published a lively and readable a biography of Marcus Loane called Marcus L. Loane: A Biography (Melbourne: Acorn Press). However, at less that 150 pages, it always seemed incongruously small and slight for so towering a figure as Loane. It was clear in 2004 that another fuller biography would still be required.  

Rev Allan Blanch’s 400 page biography has now stepped into this historiographical gap with grace and power. Blanch is well positioned to write this work. He was himself ordained by Loane in 1966, and served in several leading parishes in the Diocese of Sydney, including the parish of St Barnabas Broadway 1974-1982.

Blanch writes with elegant, austere prose. Deeply and meticulously researched, it is a warm and admiring account of Loane. The book does occasionally alert the reader to some of Loane’s errors (such as the time he harshly chastised a member of Synod whose innocent comment he had misunderstood). However, the book is overwhelmingly positive toward its subject, written by an intelligent admirer.
 
Loane the Anglican Evangelical

Marcus Loane’s life and work held together a tenacious loyalty to Anglican forms and order with an unimpeachable commitment to evangelicalism. He was insistent on clerical dress, refusing to take questions from clerical members of Synod not wearing clerical collars. Once in the 1970s he summoned the book's author, then rector of St Barnabas Broadway, to his office after introducing bishop Robinson at an F. F. Bruce evening lecture without wearing a clerical collar. He saw the The Book of Common Prayer as not just a bulwark for orthodoxy within the Anglican communion, but as a pure well of reformed and evangelical spirituality. He nevertheless moved freely in interdenominational circles and was warmly received and appreciated by non-Anglican evangelicals and in the wider Christian community.

In a way that people in my generation find hard to fathom, he was also able to hold together a deep loyalty to British culture, society and monarch with a similarly unimpeachable claim to be Australian.

One of the more controversial episodes of Loane’s life was his decision not to attend the ecumenical service at the Sydney Town Hall on the occasion of Pope Paul VI’s visit to Australia in 1970. It was a decision for which he received praise among reformed Christians including Francis Schaeffer and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and severe criticism from both fellow Anglicans and the secular press. Interestingly, Loane was later to say that he found more understanding for his decision among Roman Catholics than among Anglicans (p 246). What Blanch makes clear is that it was a decision made on theological principle without any personal animosity or bigotry.

Blanch’s book also records some fascinating incidental anecdotes, such as the time Marcus and Patricia Loane travelled with John Stott the 100-plus kilometres from their home in Sydney to the Blue Mountains, only to discover Loane had left the keys to the house back in Sydney. Stott eventually managed to break in through a bedroom window to open the house.

What emerges most clearly from Blanch’s biography is the picture of a pastor. Despite holding senior office and despite a prolific publishing record, Loane operated fundamentally as a minister of the word of God—visiting the sick, leading people to faith, preaching the word of God and praying for the people in his care. (On visiting the sick, Loane—normally a stickler for the rules—would happy ignore the advertised visiting hours in hospitals in order to pray at people’s bedsides.)

Conclusion

I don’t know if my sense of the gap between the piety of Sir Marcus’s generation and my own is actually true. Perhaps the nature of biography is that Loane was singular within his generation? Perhaps for every Sir Marcus or John Stott or Leon Morris, there were thousands of ordinary Christians of that generation whose personal spiritual lives were as modest and meek as my own?

Or, perhaps Loane is an example of intelligent piety we can and should seek to recover? Whatever the case, the combination of warm personal knowledge of God with serious minded reading of scripture is an intoxicating thing to see. More of that, please.

Allan Blanch has written an excellent biography of an important figure in the story of Christianity in Australia. I warmly recommend it.
Rory Shiner studied Arts at the University of Western Australia and theology at Moore College in Sydney. He is currently completing a PhD through Macquarie University on the life and work of Donald Robinson. He is senior pastor of Providence City Church in Perth, where he lives with his wife, Susan, and their four boys. He has written books on Union with Christ and on the relationship between Jesus' resurrection and our own.
Rory serves as a member of the TGCA Editorial Panel as Editor for the Arts and Culture Channel and for Book Reviews.

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Written by: Tony Nichols

“Child, Arise – A Spiritual Handbook For Survivors Of Sexual Abuse”
by Jane N Dowling, David Lovell Publishing, Melbourne, 2015.
(awarded the National Christian Book Award by SPCKA/Sparklit)

“Child Arise” by Jane Dowling is a Christian “Handbook for Survivors of Sexual Abuse”,  especially abuse by clergy. The book is a gentle, almost tremulous, series of personal reflections on Biblical passages, whose genesis lies in her fearful preparations to appear before the Royal Commission for Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is a book by a victim for other victims by one who has spent countless hours meditating on the Scriptures and applying them to her own situation.

Evangelical Christians might be surprised that a Roman Catholic author can so powerfully apply Bible passages to the painful journey of survival, without ignoring the original context of the texts chosen, and their place in the unfolding scheme of Divine revelation. “Child, Arise” helps the reader feel the pain, shame and paralysis of victims of sexual abuse, but provides inspiration, encouragement and hope from prayerful reflection on the words of God.
 
A.H (Tony) Nichols.

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Written by: Thom Bull

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:32.) Mary’s words to Jesus when he finally arrives in Bethany, three days later than requested and four days after Lazarus has been put in the tomb, carry all the pain and disappointment of one who feels that the Lord has completely let her down. Martha manages to retain some hope in Jesus’ ability to do something for her brother, though she doesn’t seem to know what, exactly (11:21-24); Mary, though, voices no such hope: We called you, you didn’t turn up, and now it’s too late.

What Mary and Martha don’t know, however, is why Jesus didn’t come earlier, as soon as they sent word to him of Lazarus’s illness. It wasn’t, as they might imagine, due to distraction, or procrastination, or laziness; it was in fact, paradoxically, due to love: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” (11:5-6.) Notice carefully what is being said there – it’s not despite the fact that Jesus loved them that he waited (though some translations, most notably the NRSV, render it this way); it’s specifically because he loved them that he waited. Out of his love for this family, Jesus didn’t come immediately, arriving in time to heal Lazarus’s sickness. Rather, he hung back longer where he was, on the other side of the Jordan, so as to allow Lazarus to die.

And this raises the obvious question of how that could possibly have been the more loving course to take. Surely the more compassionate response would have been to act immediately on Mary and Martha’s message, spare them from grief and spare Lazarus from death. What kind of love would stand back and allow this horrible thing to take place? The answer is given to us by Jesus himself: it is a love that intends to display a greater glory. When he is informed of Lazarus’s illness, right before John tells us that love motivated his delay, Jesus says “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it” (11:4). Jesus will love Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, not by keeping them from such a painful event, but by letting it come, because he deems that they will more clearly see who he is as he rescues them from the midst of the mess, than if he keeps the mess from overwhelming them in the first place. And giving them a clearer view of who he is – that is the most loving thing he can do for them, or for anyone.

Of course, as Jesus arrives in Bethany, all this is hidden from Mary. Jesus doesn’t explain his purposes to her. She doesn’t see someone acting out of love towards her and her family, she only sees a Lord who apparently shelved her request, neglected to show up when he was needed, and failed her brother. But in a few moments she will accompany him to the tomb, and as he calls the dead man out, she will see the fuller glory of the one whose word can not only heal the sick, but can give life to the dead – the word of the one who has life in himself (5:25-26).  

Now at this point, it would be tempting to draw a simplistic theodicy from all of this – to see tragedy as something purposed by God in a straightforward way for his glory, and therefore as something which, while we might not recognise it at the time, is essentially good. We ought to resist that temptation. The fact that Jesus weeps and feels rage in the face of death (11:33, 35) shows that death remains in itself an unqualified evil, even as Jesus uses it as the occasion of his glory. Rather, as Jesus allows Lazarus to die and then raises him, that death comes to magnify the Son’s glory, not as we might – as a willing and obedient servant with a positive place in the Father’s purposes – but rather as, in those purposes, it is entirely trampled down. It is only in its defeat and negation that death serves the glory of the Son. And indeed, the defeat which begins beside the tomb of Lazarus will be concluded in several chapter’s time, after the Father has glorified his Son in his death, and he himself emerges from the tomb – this time with the bands of death left behind (cp. 11:44; 20:6-7), and its power definitively broken.

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Written by: Martin Bleby

Martin Bleby

Marriage, in the words of the marriage service, ‘is an honourable state of life, instituted from the beginning by God himself, signifying to us the spiritual union that is between Christ and his Church’

Is the linking of our marriages to the relationship of Jesus Christ with his people just a nice idea, an interesting likeness, a helpful symbol? Or is there more to it than that? Could the relationship between Christ and his Church be a key to understanding what marriage is really all about, especially in these days of contesting uncertainty as to the true nature and value of marriage?

Might it take us further—even to the heart of the purpose for which all things exist?

Christ and his Church

In the Bible, God’s purpose for his creation culminates in the marriage of Christ with his Church. In the new heaven and new earth, God’s people are depicted as ‘a bride adorned for her husband’, and we hear that ‘the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready’.

Paul the apostle links marriage in this age with that ultimate marriage of Christ with his people in Ephesians 5:31–32. First he quotes God’s institution of marriage in Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”. From the context, we would expect him to say that he is applying this text to the marriage of a man and a woman. But he goes on to say: ‘This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church’.

Paul is saying that when God in the beginning instituted marriage between a man and a woman, what God had in view was the relationship that would come to be in the end between Christ and his people. It’s as if God was thinking: ‘What can I do, to give these human creatures of mine a taste of how much I love them? I’ll make them male and female, and bring them together in a fruitful, devoted and life-long union.’

American theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) came to this conclusion:

The end of the creation of God was to provide a spouse for his Son Jesus Christ, that might enjoy him and on whom he might pour forth his love. . . . heaven and earth were created that the Son of God might be complete in a spouse . . . There was, [as] it were, an eternal society or family in the Godhead, in the Trinity of persons. It seems to be God’s design to admit the church into the divine family as his son’s wife.

Geoffrey Bromiley sees this union with Christ as ‘the prototype of the marital union’, not the other way round, since God ‘made marriage in the image of his own eternal marriage with his people’:

In creating man—male and female—in his own image, and joining them together so that they become one flesh, God makes us copies both of himself in his trinitarian unity and distinction as one God and three persons and of himself in relation to the people of his gracious election.

Hence ‘We know the true reality of marriage from God’s way of dealing with us and the inward and eternal fellowship that he establishes’.   Every marriage is intended to be a reflection of, and can be a participation in, this great reality that will culminate in the union, in Christ, of God with his people.

Christian Marriage

What are the implications of this for marriage as it has taken shape in Christian understanding and practice?

Marriage is ‘the legal union of a man with a woman for life’. The word is also used for ‘the legal or religious ceremony that sanctions or formalises the decision of a man and a woman to live as husband and wife’.  Elements that make it a marriage, as distinct from other forms of union or relationship, are that it is between a man and a woman, by the consent and decision of both parties; it is recognised and affirmed by the wider community according to the law of the land, and it is witnessed to in a formal ceremony. These elements are common to humanity across most cultures.

Marriage, according to law in Australia, is ‘the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life’.  This understanding of marriage largely accords with Christian belief and practice. Since the New Testament trains husbands to love their wives, and wives to love their husbands,  a Christian definition could be expanded to be ‘the union in mutual love of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life’.

Pressure from expressions of marriage as practiced or desired by diverse cultural and interest groups raises questions as to why marriage should be this way. Can same-sex unions be regarded as marriage? Why not polygamy (a number of wives—as found in the Old Testament), or polyandry (a number of husbands), or a mixture of both? What about arranged, or under-age marriages? Does marriage need to be permanent? Why bother to get married at all—why not just cohabitation?

In this context, Christians who want to support and commend the Christian understanding and experience of marriage need to be clear as to its basis. Is it all about the sexual relationship? Is it just a private arrangement for mutual convenience? Is it mainly for reproduction and the raising of offspring? Is it a communal construct for the better ordering of society? Is it primarily a legal contract regarding the sharing of property? Is companionship its main emphasis? Marriage based solely on any or each of these views will take on a particular character, and will have its own cut-off points. But what if marriage, more deeply than all of these, is grounded in the intentional purpose of our Creator for humanity? In particular, if the basis of marriage is the relationship between Christ and his Church, what is it about this relationship that makes marriage what Christians now know it to be?

the union

Christ became one flesh with us, and in our flesh took the condemnation due to our sin, in his suffering and death—you can’t get closer to anyone than that.  So marriage is the honouring of the other person ‘with all that I am and all that I have’.

in mutual love

God’s saving action in relationship with us comes about entirely by God’s love—‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son’. ‘Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . he nourishes and tenderly cares for it’ as his own body. In turn, we are to ‘have an undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ’.  Hence a husband and wife are ‘to love and to cherish’ one another.

of a man and a woman

The creation of human persons as male and female, differentiated and yet of the same substance, is linked in the Scriptures with us being in the image of God, and with the differentiation-in-unity within God between the Father and the Son. The coming-together of man and woman in marriage is also linked with the relationship of God in Christ with his people—markedly distinct, yet with an amazing affinity.  In reflection of this, marriage, in scripture, is between a man and a woman, not between a woman and a woman, or a man and a man.

to the exclusion of all others

Christ, the ‘Faithful and True’, is single-hearted and undistracted in his saving love for his people. By the same token, we are to have ‘a sincere and pure devotion to Christ’.  So marriage has the character of ‘close your heart to every love but mine’, and ‘forsaking all others’.

voluntarily entered into
God is not obliged to relate with human beings, ‘as though he needed anything’—he chooses to do so out of love.  In that, God has made us to ‘feel after him and find him’.  Christ of his own freewill engaged in carrying out God’s purpose, and we come into true freedom as we relate with him.  Before the vows are made in a marriage service, the couple are asked the preliminary question, ‘will you [are you willing to] take this woman/this man . . . ?’—of your own freewill, without compulsion.

for life

Jesus, ‘having loved his own . . . loved them to the end’.  So marriage is ‘till death us do part’, for ‘as long as we both shall live’.

We see then that marriage as Christians have come to understand and practice it derives from and is shaped by our knowledge and experience of Christ’s relationship with us. And God’s relationship with us in Christ lies at the heart of God’s purpose for this world.

Marriage and the Purpose of God

God purpose for the world is perhaps best expressed in Ephesians 1:3–6:

the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

• Note three particular elements here:
• ‘adoption as his children’—the forming of a family.
• ‘holy and blameless before him’—positive moral purity.
• ‘in love’—issuing from God’s love, resulting in us loving.

Interestingly, these correspond to the purposes given in Christian marriage services for which God instituted marriage—having families and bringing them up, sexual purity and faithfulness, and loving companionship:

• ‘it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name’.  As expressed in a more recent form of the marriage service: ‘In marriage a new family is established in accordance with God’s purpose, so that children may be born and nurtured in secure and loving care, for their well-being and instruction, and for the good order of society, to the glory of God’.
• ‘it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication’.  Modern marriage services say it less directly, yet positively, as ‘the proper expression of natural instincts and affections’ with which God has endowed us, or living ‘a chaste and holy life, as befits members of Christ’s body’.
• ‘it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity’.  ‘In the joys and sorrows of life, in prosperity and adversity, they share their companionship, faithfulness and strength’.

These three ‘purposes’, derived from the New Testament Scriptures, were commonplaces of mediaeval scholastic theology, and were expounded at length in early Calvinistic services. They were introduced into the English prayer book in 1549, and so were included in the Book of Common Prayer of 1662.  From there they have made their way, in various forms, into later marriage services. Here they are given in the original order: family, sexual purity, and loving companionship. More recent services have reversed this order, giving priority to loving companionship and the sexual relationship, with family issuing from that. Either way, they clearly correspond to the greater purpose of God for humanity, as expressed in Ephesians 1:3–6.

The Struggle for Marriage

Given this correspondence, it is not difficult to see why marriage should come under attack, consciously or unconsciously, from those who at present are not aligned with the purpose of God, since it represents in practice that from which they are alienated, or against which they are opposed. A friend who works in human services heard a colleague once say, ‘I hate Jesus, and I hate marriage!’ Interesting that she put those two together. She went on to ask my friend, ‘You’re not one of those Jesus freaks, are you?’ and my friend replied, ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am’.

How should we engage in this struggle? In favour of retaining marriage as it is, it can be well argued that ‘a kid should have a mum and a dad’, and that marriage is a ‘central structure of human nature . . . which has underpinned the wellbeing of society’.  There is a place for participating in the public discourse at that level. But there is much more that we can say—and are we not called upon to do so? Why are we hesitant to speak of God in this context? Can we not say that marriage is a sacred bond, instituted by our Creator in making us male and female in the first place; that it is a living sign in our midst of our intended union with God, now and into eternity; and that to change or extend marriage to include other relationships is ultimately to undermine and discard true marriage, and all that it stands for, to our great harm?

Even better, should we not be doing all we can to bring more people through faith and repentance into that relationship with Christ, so that marriage in our community may continue to take its shape from him, and from his relationship with us?

The Secret of the Universe

Is all this just fanciful, out of touch, and irrelevant to where people are in their lives today? A story to finish:

A number of years ago in January we were staying at Victor Harbor, a seaside resort on South Australia’s southern coast. One afternoon we went for a walk to Granite Island across the causeway. At that time there was a chairlift from the end of the causeway to the highest point on the island. Our youngest son wanted a ride on the chairlift, so we put him and his mate on the chairlift, to go up to the top of the hill and down again, and we stayed chatting with the chairlift operator, who seemed to want to talk with us. A very interesting fellow. He was sitting there, getting rather bored, but watching the people come across the causeway, and thinking deeply. Called himself quite a spiritual person, and told us of one or two experiences that made him think this was so. Told us how he had been in and out of churches, but how he believed in God. I had not identified myself as a Christian or a minister—he just came out with all this. He ended up telling us about his marriage. How, when he met his wife, this was one relationship that did not chill off after a while, like all the others had, but remained and grew, and drew him out of himself into the life of another person. And he said, ‘Do you know why I think we get married? It’s not just to have children and raise a family. It is to discover the secret of the universe. I really mean, of God.’

We need to trust that the Holy Spirit is out there, bringing God’s truth to bear in the lives of people—including this chairlift operator!

Martin Bleby, ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church, has served in country, outback and metropolitan South Australia, in the cross-denominational New Creation Teaching Ministry, and as a Chairman of CMS Australia. Now ‘retired’, he remains active in preaching and teaching. He has authored a number of books, including ‘Marriage and the Good News of God’, now out of print but able to be downloaded in pdf format for free from:
 http://www.newcreationlibrary.net/books/covers/423.htm
Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.